2 for 1: Bookcases

My last excuse for such a long blog hiatus? A show followed by a trip.

My excuse this time? Another show, followed by another trip.

But in the midst of all that crazy, I actually have done some work on my stuff! I just haven’t been able to find the time to sit down and write about it. I’m currently embarking on rehearsals for another show starting next week, but as of now, I won’t be following that show up with a trip, so maybe I won’t completely fall off the blogging map again (probably wishful thinking, but I’m gonna try). In the meantime, I’ll attempt to bring things up to date.

I mentioned back in January that I had read Marie Kondo’s book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. One of the things she talks about very specifically is the process of paring down your book collection – or, perhaps, more accurately, getting rid of all but your most beloved books. Books are a tough one for me – I love to read, and in addition to devouring new titles, I often reread old favorites and get just as much pleasure from them the second, third, and twentieth time around. I also am a former English major and live in Portland in close proximity to the reader’s mecca of Powell’s, so it’s probably not surprising that I own a lot of books. We have four bookcases throughout our house, and also have built in cubbyholes in our bedroom that make perfect little book storage areas as well, and all of them are full.

Only one of our bookcases is actually nice (a lovely hardwood piece from Ethan Allen)- the others, not so much. Two are cheap particleboard ones from Target (one of which was a hand me down from friends who were moving), and the remaining one I bought very inexpensively at a second hand store. It’s actually hardwood, but it’s also old and kind of falling apart, and could probably use a new paint job. It earns its keep, however, by being unusually narrow and able to fit perfectly into a little niche in our hallway. The Ethan Allen bookcase and one of the particleboard ones lives in our office space in a his and hers sort of arrangement – and the other particleboard bookcase is in the corner of our guest room.

It occurred to me that if I were to whittle down my book collection to what I most loved, I could reduce the number of bookcases I owned as well. This was a particularly attractive idea for our guest room, because having the bookcase in the corner didn’t leave guests any real room for important stuff like luggage. And in the office, the space felt overly crammed with furniture as well – literally every wall in that room was lined with either a desk, a bookcase, or credenza, with almost zero whitespace.

Ms. Kondo’s advice for tidying involves gathering all items of a like type from all over your living space and putting them in a pile in one room, so you can clearly see just how much of that one type of item you own. With books, this can seem a little silly since if your book are on shelves, you can clearly see the titles and sort through them that way. But she was firm on this point – take them out and put them in pile, because part of her process also includes physically touching each item and intuitively responding to the question “Does this item bring me joy?” and if the answer is not a resounding yes, it has to go. I decided to commit to Kondo’s method and pulled all my books from the shelves and spread them out on the living room floor.

I’m sorry to say I was so wrapped up in the process of all that gathering and questioning that I forgot to take any before pictures of the bookcases or the massive pile on my living room floor. But when my sorting process was over, I did have a pretty big stack of books to take to resale – it took me one full rolling suitcase and two large shopping bags to haul it all in. (Side note: I made almost no money at resale. With the internet, books have become much less of a rare commodity. I ended up donating the majority of them).

But while I had technically disposed of enough books to empty two full bookcases, I had not anticipated that the individual sizes of the books remaining would pose a problem. In addition to some beloved large format coffee table books, I have a lot of scripts that I keep in three ring binders which were too tall for most of the shelves of the bookcases, with the exception of the cheap particleboard one in the guest room I was hoping to get rid of (sigh). I could keep all the bookcases I currently had, but it would mean they were all half empty. Ugh.

So we bought a new bookcase. It may seem counterproductive, but after multiple attempts of arranging and rearranging our remaining collection into various bookcase combinations, it became clear that we simply needed something that better suited our needs. So we went on the hunt for one that would be large enough to hold my entire book collection (Ron’s much smaller collection could be easily housed in the nice Ethan Allen bookcase we wanted to keep), and had adjustable shelves to accommodate the scripts and large format books. We found a lovely, locally made alder wood bookcase at a Portland store called Natural Furniture that fit the bill perfectly, and it was on a great sale as well.

The new bookcase

That allowed us to happily give the two particleboard bookcases to our friend Kelley, who is a teacher and needed them for her classroom. Creating more free space in our house, and helping a teacher in the process? Yes please. Total win/win.

The two we exchanged for one

We’re currently keeping the narrow bookcase in the hallway, though I’m not sure it’s here for the long run. It holds my stash of empty journals and some of the decorative objects and picture frames that got displaced when we got rid of the other two bookcases, so it looks a bit junky, but I’m not ready to let it go just yet.

The office still holds two bookcases as before, and admittedly, still feels pretty over full with furniture. But there is now a lovely empty corner in the guest room where at some point we may put a luggage rack or perhaps just a small set of hooks on the wall, but for now we’re leaving it free. It looks so much more roomy and welcoming, and is much easier to clean – I love it.

I guess the lesson I learned in this process is that sometimes it makes sense to upgrade to one new lagom item that fits all your needs, instead of keeping a larger collection of imperfect items that have to all work together to get the same job done. It may have cost us a little extra to make it happen, but it was worth it.

7 Comment(s)

Books are a big one for me, too. Over ten years of living in Boston, where the used book stores are rich and plentiful, I amassed hundreds and hundreds. Having to return to the West Coast forced me to do my first big purge; I’ve done many smaller ones since. Now, though I suspect I have more books than you, judging by your photos and description, I have some basic “maintenance” strategies: I buy very few (no more than a couple a year), read hundreds from the library, and get rid of ones I’ve had to purchase fairly soon after I’ve read them (a matter of months, rather than years or decades).

My primary criteria for keeping or discarding? There are the beloved ones I cannot do without; the authors I collect for both devotion and — possibly — investment reasons (e.g., John Fowles, Jules Feiffer, and Harlan Ellison); and the occasional volumes I know from experience and observation would be very hard to find again in either a library, used book store, or maybe even the Internet.

Those are pretty much my criteria for keeping books too – though it was interesting to use Kondo’s “Does this bring me joy?” question this time around. In some cases, I think I felt attached to a book because it was a gift from someone I liked, or in a couple cases I had signed copies so I thought they might be worth something (they were not). But in trying to listen to my heart/gut when I held each volume in my hands was a new experience for me -I tossed more than I typically have in the past! It was surprising.

Just so you know, I always read these blogs and get inspired thinking about it. I am reading Kondo’s book and adopted her technique of not balling up my socks. No proof here, but I think they are happier. Keep on writing please.